Zara's Leadership and Management Structure: A Comprehensive Analysis

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MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS

Executive Summary
The report consists of the leadership and management concepts and its influences on
the organisational performances. The chosen organisation is Zara, a clothing
organisation. The management structure of the company has been described. It has
been explained about the different characteristics and roles of leaders and managers. A
variety of models and theories have been analysed for identifying the functions of the
leadership management as per the various organisational situations. Key approaches of
the management have been evaluated and several external and internal factors and
their impacts on the business have been discussed as well.
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 4
1. An introduction to the organisation and management structure...................................5
LO1.................................................................................................................................. 6
Define and compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a manager
(P1).................................................................................................................................. 6
Analyse and differentiate between the role of a leader and function of a manager by
effectively applying a range of theories and concepts (M1).............................................8
LO2................................................................................................................................ 11
Examine examples of how the role of a leader and the function of a manager apply in
different situational contexts (P2)...................................................................................11
Apply different theories and models of approach, including situational leadership,
systems leadership and contingency and its strengths and weaknesses (P3, M2)........11
Critically analyse and evaluate the different theories and approaches to leadership in
given contexts (D1)........................................................................................................ 12
LO3................................................................................................................................ 14
Explain the key approaches to operations management and the role of leaders and
managers (P4)............................................................................................................... 14
Explanation of the importance and value of operations management in achieving
business objectives (P5)................................................................................................ 16
Evaluate how leaders and managers can improve efficiencies of operational
management to successfully meet business objectives (M3)........................................17
LO4................................................................................................................................ 18
Assess the factors within the business environment that impact upon operational
management and decision-making by leaders and managers (P6)...............................18
Analyse how these different factors affect the business environment and wider
community (M4, D2).......................................................................................................18
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 19
Recommendations......................................................................................................... 19
References.....................................................................................................................20
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Introduction
Management and operations is considered to be a concept of understanding the
operational techniques of the management of a company and its influences on the
company. Management of an organisation has a definite structure, which creates a
perfect scenario of the business operation of the company (Northouse, 2017).
Management has the duty to make certain processes like planning, organising,
controlling, and building good working environment. They have to have few skills and
abilities such as organisational skills, coordination skills, decision making skills,
leadership skills, problem solving skills and so on. This report is based on the
organisational structure and the leadership techniques in the organisation of Zara.
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1. An introduction to the organisation and management structure
Zara is a multinational clothing retail organisation, which operates its business from
Spain. The company was formed in the year 1975 and the foundation was made by
Amancio Ortega and Rosalia Mera. It is headquartered at Arteixo in Spain. It has been
operating in worldwide as it has more than 10000 departmental stores. It offers all the
apparel products for men, women and kids. The organisation has generated around
18.9 billion US Dollar of revenue in the year 2018.
Management structure
Figure 1: Management structure of Zara
(Source: Zara.com. 2019)
The company of Zara has built a solid management structure. The company activities
are being operated under the efficient Chief Executive Officer. Under CEO, there are
various other operational departments which are making several significant approaches
for the business prosperity. The important departments are operation department,
human resource department, marketing department, sales department, financial
department and others. Under the efficient leadership of HR manager, the team has
been recruiting huge number of potential people within the workforce. The company has
managed to make several effective financial approaches under the proper guidance of
the Chief Financial Officer of the company. It has conquered the large scale of market
by designing various marketing strategies under Chief Marketing Officer. It has been
understood that with the successful collaboration of the various departments, the
company has achieved the desired outcomes.
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LO1
Define and compare the different roles and characteristics of a leader and a
manager (P1)
A company can be successful by having effective leadership and management.
Leadership can be defined as the behavioural aspect in which the leaders must have
the knowledge of having leadership skills. It helps the organisation to successfully meet
its goals and objectives. The company of Zara has managed to build its business by
efficient efforts from the leaders and the managers. Leaders are those people who
guide their subordinates and the managers have the people who perform under their
supervision. Both have different characteristics.
Roles and characteristics of leader
Integrity and genuineness: The leaders must have these characteristics for keeping
the discipline in the working system (Friedrich et al., 2016). Disciplined teamwork
always helps to get the positive results and avoid the conflicts.
Vision: Vision is always needed for identifying the path in which the employees have to
work on and produce their performances. It helps the employees to understand their
responsibilities.
Motivation: Motivation is key for the employees as it helps them to successfully
achieve the business goals. The leaders are responsible for building the motivation level
of the team members.
Challenge handling capacity: The leaders must have the capacity of handling the
challenges in efficient manner. A successful leader does not make any excuse but finds
the alternative paths to get over the challenging situations.
Relational abilities: Leaders need to have enough experience for providing proper
education and technical learning to their team members.
Characteristics of Managers
Unlike the leaders, the managers have different responsibilities. They are responsible to
ask the team leaders and members to accomplish certain tasks within given time.
Several processes like organising, planning, controlling and leading are taken by them
for meeting certain goals according to the Henri Fayol Management Theory. Managers
can also be called as supervisor, team leader and department head as per the
situations (Zhang, 2017).
Planning: It is important to set goals for the company and make various action plans for
achieving these goals.
Organising: The managers are responsible to organise the works by dividing the works
to the members.
Controlling: It refers to supervising of the activities and the managers are responsible
to monitor the works for maintaining the work efficiency.
Leading: The managers can also be the leader sometimes by directing and further
motivating the staffs.
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Figure 2: Different management functions
(Souce: Taylor, 2015)
The managers have common traits through which they perform for the company’s
development.
Roles of managers
Managers have different roles which have been analysed by Henry Mintzberg.
Decisional roles
● Entrepreneur
● Resource allocator
● Negotiator
● Disturbance handler
Interpersonal roles
● Leader
● Liaison
● figurehead
Informational roles
● Monitor
● Spokesperson
● Disseminator
Implementation of vision
The managers design the vision for the organisation and make the execution of those
visions for guiding the teams.
Ability to direct
The managers have the ability to properly direct other staffs in making various activities
for the organisation.
Process management
The managers generally make certain processes like building rules and policies, making
various business strategies, applying innovative techniques to overcome the issues and
others (Hammer, 2015).
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The managers and the leaders have different functional roles which are essential for the
company.
Activities Leader Manager
Approach Leaders make proper
directions to the people.
Managers are responsible for
planning the detailed strategies.
Responsibility They are responsible for
leading the groups by
motivating the members.
They have the responsibility to
manage all the business related
tasks and taking control over the
process.
Style Transactional,
transformational
Democratic, authoritative,
collaborative, autocratic
Aim Their main aim is to develop
the performance of the
teams.
The managers focus on getting
the positive results.
Decision They execute the decisions
within the activities.
They make decisions.
Focus Leaders focus on the people. Managers focus on business
processes.
Subordinates They have followers. They have employees.
Change
management
They promote the changes
for facing the challenges.
They create the ideas and
execute those to bring the
changes.
Table 1: Differences between the function between leaders and managers
(Source: Created by the learner)
Hence, it has been understood that the leaders generally achieve the organisational
goals and objectives by effective performances and on the other hand, the managers
keep busy on making plans and direction for the workers.
Analyse and differentiate between the role of a leader and function of a manager
by effectively applying a range of theories and concepts (M1)
Transactional leadership
It is a traditional theory that is used in various situations. Leaders play key roles for
providing the enthusiasm to the members (Antonakis and Day, 2017). They utilise
reward process for building the motivation level into the mind of the staffs. However, it
can be ineffective as the employees sometimes might not able to be motivated for
various reasons. It can be said that it would work in a short term period.
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Transformational leadership
It depends on the performances of transformational leaders. Proper communication is
the key thing in this theory which may help to increase the motivation level (Ghasabeh
et al., 2015). The employees get the inspirations as the leaders make the positive
communication with them. It is useful for designing effective ideas and innovations in
the organisational activities.
Action-centred leadership
Action centred leadership of Adair have three elements such as development of team,
development of individuals, achieving tasks. It helps the leaders to separately achieve
the leadership roles efficiently as well as completion of the team building and
development is possible in more practical way and less tangible way (Swanwick, 2017).
‘Hard’ management skills and ‘soft’ leadership skills
Hard management skills are also considered as the teachable abilities.
● Education certificate
● Machine operating ability
● Language proficiency
● Technical ability
Soft management skills are also considered as interpersonal skills.
● Communication skill
● Flexibility
● Time management
● Leadership
Trait theory of leadership
Trait leadership theory is dependent on the traits and characteristics of the leaders
(Nawaz and Khan, 2016). It is useful to enhance the efficiency which brings the success
for the organisation. According to the theory, the leaders have few traits to make
successful coordination with the management and the team members. The leader
should have the traits like honesty, integrity, maturity, knowledge and others.
Scientific Management Theory
This classical theory was invented by Frederick Taylor that refers to the synthesis of
workforce and its influence on the productivity. It points the focus on improving the level
of efficiency in the production and other activities. It emphasises on the introduction of
the innovations and technologies so that the organisation can build performance level
(Waring, 2016). There are four principles of the theory. Replacement of scientific
methods with the common methods, matching the job with staff capability, supervising
activities and monitoring the performance are the principles. The management of Zara
must follow this method for getting successful business advantages in the market.
Several approaches like analysing the processes and measuring the performances are
applied for keeping the efficient environment.
Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Effect
It is based on the behavioural theory which was introduced by Elton Mayo. This theory
is built for monitoring the changes in the working conditions that make effects on the
morale of the workers. The significant changes include the changes in working periods,
lighting, rest brakes and others. It has been identified in the theory that the workers are
motivated by self realisations as it is based on several elements like psychological
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contract, socialisation, workers’ interests, worker recognition, group activities and
communication.
Figure 3: Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Effect
(Source: Trahair and Zaleznik, 2017)
The concerned company needs to follow this theory in the behavioural context of the
workers. It helps the management to identify the sudden changes in the work culture
and act as per the requirements as well.
These theories depict that the managers and the leaders perform under effective
collaboration with each other. However, they have different functional roles as the
leaders focus on building successful groups or teams and manager focuses on the
processes and the organisational issues. The managers point out the issues but never
put any effort to solve that and the leaders are asked to rectify and overcome those
issues. The rectification process and the results are reviewed and approved by the
managers.
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LO2
Examine examples of how the role of a leader and the function of a manager
apply in different situational contexts (P2)
There are various types of situations in which the leaders and managers need to make
significant approaches for getting the success in the business.
● At the stable situations, the leaders and managers do not feel such challenges
for handling the situation as the situation is already under control. In this
situation, they are responsible to continue the process in a more efficient way so
that the work efficiency can be more improved. This kind of situation can be
raised at the time of financial or production growth of the company.
● Sometimes, it can be seen that the organisational situation is changing slowly.
These changes can be happened as per the company structure, the task
management, and workers’ performances. However, these changes can be
helpful sometimes as the management can introduce innovative ways to make
the activities. The managers and leaders are responsible to take these changes
as challenges and create positive ideas to get accustomed with these changes
(Parkkinen et al., 2015). External business environment can also be the reason
for the internal changes of the organisation.
● The organisations, in several times, can face the fast changing situations in
their business scenario. It is because of the external business factors and also
the internal abilities of the companies. It is the time when the leaders are
managers are examined by the company whether they can be able to cope up
with the changes or not. They should have the leadership and problem solving
skills for taking this kind of situation. The market crisis or huge loss of the
company may be the reasons for raising this type of situation.
In the context of the business operation of Zara, these kinds of situations often have
raised. The company has got the benefits of having a bunch of potential managers and
leaders under the operation which has enabled them to get the sustainable success in
its business.
Apply different theories and models of approach, including situational leadership,
systems leadership and contingency and its strengths and weaknesses (P3, M2)
Situational Leadership
This leadership refers to the different approaches of the leaders and the maturity level
of the team members. In this leadership theory, the commitment level of the leaders and
their followers are determined (Thompson and Glasø, 2015). In any kind of situations, it
helps the management to perform efficiently. This kind of leadership helps to have the
motivation level among the employees that helps to bring more team working culture in
the company. It has few weaknesses as low maturity level of the members can be
harmful for the company.
System Leadership
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It refers to the activities like production, marketing, promotion, finance, sales, customer
service and others which are conducted in systematic ways (Senge et al., 2015).
Managers are responsible to make the collection of important resources to generate
useful results. The main strength is that this model of leadership is adaptive and
multidimensional and the weakness is that this model can sometimes be unrealistic as it
has less clarity.
Contingency Leadership
It seems to be the most suitable leadership model for the companies as the concerned
company of Zara also has been following this kind of leadership management.
According to Fiedler’s contingency theory, the managers are responsible to consider
the external and internal possible changes that might have affected the organisational
activities (Jansen et al., 2016). It helps to understand the organisational working
procedures and further extend the goals. Managers often have the tendency to not to
make the proper scrutiny on the factors which can create the complicated scenario as
well.
Critically analyse and evaluate the different theories and approaches to
leadership in given contexts (D1)
Chaos Theory
It is essential to have proper control on the changes of the business scenario of the
company. As per the changes in the consumers’ demands, suppliers’ power,
competitors’ power, the organisation needs to have effective strategies to manage the
changes (Azar and Vaidyanathan, 2016). These unpredictable situations can bring
turmoil if the management fails to handle properly.
Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership model
In this model, relationship behaviour or task behaviour of leaders are determined.
Leaders are responsible to set the goals and responsibilities for the workers according
to the situation. Several initiatives are taken by the leaders to make comprehensive
growth of the performances. The managers create vision for the company to fulfil the
objectives and take control over the organisational processes. This leadership is flexible
that helps team members to be motivated at the workplace. Their maturity level ensures
the efficient workflow of the company.
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